Tinnitus
The ringing or buzzing only you can hear. There is no cure, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What there is is a way of making it take up less of your day.
- First assessment
- Free, 60 minutes
- Approach
- Management, not cure
- Appointment
- Required
Let us start with what we are not going to tell you
We are not going to tell you we can take it away. Tinnitus is not curable: there is no tablet, no device and no therapy that switches it off. Any advertisement promising to eliminate it is promising something nobody can deliver.
What does change, and changes a great deal, is your relationship with the noise. There are people who have had it for years and only remember it when somebody brings it up. And there are people with a quieter tinnitus who cannot sleep. The difference is not the volume of the sound, it is how much attention it is given.
Why the ear gets measured first
A great many tinnitus cases come alongside hearing loss, often in the high frequencies and often without the person having realised. When sound stops arriving at a frequency, that frequency falls quiet, and the quiet is where the noise makes itself heard.
So the first tinnitus appointment is the same full hearing assessment: otoscopy, the booth, air and bone conduction audiometry, tympanometry and speech understanding. Until the audiogram is on the table, any plan is guesswork.
Sometimes the explanation is simpler than you fear. Wax pressed against the eardrum can make a buzz that was already there far more audible, and the camera shows that in the first minute.
Retraining therapy, and what it involves
The underlying idea is that the brain can learn to file the noise as unimportant, the way it already ignores the hum of the fridge or a fan. This is called habituation, and it is worked on from two directions at once.
One is explaining what is happening: the fear that it might be something serious keeps the noise in the foreground, and understanding it usually lowers the perceived volume more than any device does. The other is not leaving the ear in silence.
- Soft background sound, particularly at night, so the ringing is not the only thing there
- Where there is hearing loss, amplifying it returns sounds that cover the tinnitus naturally
- Some hearing aids carry noise generators built for this purpose
- Follow-up appointments to adjust as you go: this is a process of months, not one visit
When you should see a doctor rather than us
We are a hearing centre, not a surgery. Some tinnitus is not ours to deal with, and we would rather say so here than in the waiting room.
- If it has come on suddenly in one ear, with or without a sudden drop in hearing: that is a today matter, not a next-week one
- If you can hear it beating in time with your pulse
- If it comes with dizziness or vertigo
- If there is pain, discharge, or a blocked feeling after a blow to the head or ear
- If it started when your medication changed
What you can do in the meantime
None of this replaces the assessment, but these are things people do that make the weeks before the appointment easier.
- Do not chase silence: silence is when it is loudest. Leave a fan on, the radio low, or a window open
- Protect your ears from loud noise, which tends to make it worse for hours or days
- Note down when you notice it most: that is useful information for the first appointment
- If sleep is going, speak to your GP. Poor sleep and tinnitus feed each other
Common questions
Can tinnitus be cured?
No. There is no cure. There are ways of managing it so that it bothers you less and takes up less of your day. We will explain what they involve, and we will not promise you a result.
Will a hearing aid get rid of the ringing?
It will not get rid of it. Where there is hearing loss, amplification brings back ambient sound and many people find the ringing moves into the background while they are wearing the aid. How much, we cannot tell you in advance: it varies from person to person.
I mostly hear it at night. Is that normal?
It is the commonest thing we are told. At night the noise of the house and the street goes, and the ringing is left alone on the stage. That is why one of the first suggestions is not to sleep in complete silence.
Is it dangerous? Is it damaging my ear?
Tinnitus itself does not damage the ear. It is a signal, not an injury that advances. That said, there are cases that do warrant a doctor, and they are in the list above: sudden onset in one ear, a pulsing sound, or vertigo alongside it.
I have had this for twenty years. Is it too late?
There is no deadline that closes. What is useful is having a current audiogram: hearing changes over twenty years, and part of the noise may be sitting on a loss that was never measured.
The information on this site is for general guidance and does not replace a professional consultation. If you have symptoms, please see your optometrist, hearing aid audiologist or doctor.
